DECORATE! DECORATE! Cupcake Cone Daleks

So, Monday afternoon I'm supplying the cake, the extra treats, and the decorations for a party celebrating a monkey-boy's seventh birthday. The event will take place at his grandparents' house, a few blocks from where I live and bake. The activities include watching an episode of Doctor Who and then building cupcake Daleks.

In order for a riot of boys to do something like building an army of alien killer robots

there has to be a lot, A LOT of preparation, or chaos is the only thing they will generate.  After all, we are talking about sticky foods, spatulas, and an enclosed area (forecast is for thunderstorms, so there will likely be no romping in the garden). At any rate, rather than let them do as much damage as the same number of Daleks would, I've assembled the parts ahead of time.

The first stage is to get ice cream cups.

I had wanted to find some chocolate wafer cups (to make all-chocolate Daleks), but, for some reason, nobody in my area had any of them. Dang it, don't people in retail know that chocolate is a necessity, especially in these uncertain times? Well! Instead of leaving in a huff, I bought a box of colored cups, 

and l left in a minute and a huff.*

Other than that, almost everything I needed was in stock in my own cupboards. I'm a regular boy scout, I am. 

In case you're not certain what you'll need to have in your kitchen cupboards for a project like this, here is a list of all ingredients:

• cake batter, either your favorite recipe or a favorite box mix.
• food coloring
• simple whipped frosting, either your favorite recipe or from a little tub†
• little pretzel sticks
• m&m minis
• helmets. 

That last one is the hardest to come by. I've considered using chocolate-covered cherries or other straight candy domes, but they all end up looking more square than rounded, so the Dalek doesn't look very… Dalek-y. At last, though, I found, at a Big Lots store, some of these chocolate-dipped marshmallow-topped chocolate cookies

Which looked a little less dented on the cover of the box,

but I decided I could live with it, and just let the boys pretend our Daleks had just been in a big battle.

Anyway, now to the construction of your invading army. 

The first thing you are going to want to do is to set out your ice cream cups. My box of ice cream cups had eighteen in it, but the recipe I use makes two dozen cupcakes. This is only a problem if you lack ambition. Either put set up some cupcake papers or those silicone cups, or get an eight-inch cake pan or brownie pan, butter it up or line it with parchment, and set it amid your workspace. Then stand your wafer cups up, either on a cookie sheet or each in its own cup of a muffin tin. 

Next, to make the cupcakes, follow your favorite recipe or the instructions on your box mix to make  a basic cake. If you're going with coloring the cakes as I did, stick with a white cake, because you want your colors to come out intense and cheerful. (But feel free to use your favorite chocolate cake. It won't be seen once you build the Dalek.) If adding color to a white cake, once the batter is mixed, divide into as many bowls as you have colors (the standard mix provides about 5 cups of batter, so do your math on that). Add food color until it reaches the desired tint. 

Spoon batter into bottom of wafer cups, until it nearly fills, to just under a centimeter from the top of the cup. When all the cups are filled, pour any remaining batter into the cupcake papers or the small cake pan (it will not be a thick cake).

Bake about 15-18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean.  

Allow to cool completely.

Many of these will have domes upon their tops.

You do not want this lovely effect, because you are going to invert the cupcakes, so, take a sharp, serrated knife and cut away the extra cake tops so that there is a nice, flat surface. Set the cupcake down on parchment or waxed paper. (The dots you cut away may be saved for a later project or just nibbled the heck out of.)

Once it is on its paper, it is now ready for little hands to mess with it. 

Let them slather frosting around what would have been the base of the cup, but is now its top (this means the sides and the top). Have them stick a helmet on it. Then, it's a matter of setting in rows of those m&m minis (each Dalek will need at least 18 to 24 dots, depending on how tightly the child arranges his rows of dots.

Then they can dip one end of a pretzel stick into the remaining frosting, attach a weapon arm, break another pretzel in half (or bite a couple of them off so they're the desired length) and dip ends of those pieces into frosting, and attach them so they look, more or less, like this:

Admire, and then INGURGITATE! INGURGITATE! INGURGITATE!


*Thank you, Groucho Marx.

†I made a several batches of white "buttercream" frosting, combining 1/3 cup water (plus a little extra as needed), 1/3 cup solid vegetable shortening (Crisco), and 4 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar, then added most of a packet of unsweetened Kool-Aid plus matching food coloring to make some frosting for the party. It's tart and tangy and probably not for adult taste buds. But I love the stuff. The Demonstration Dalek, though, is, as you can see, made from pre-fab frosting.

Pop's Birthday Lemon Meringue Pie

Our family likes desserts of all sorts, but there is one sweet which reigns supreme, especially with my father, and that sugary delight, to the shock of some, is not cake. Indeed, with that in mind, for more than four decades, Pop has been treated on his birthday to one particular cake alternative.

He gets lemon meringue pie.

He gets his special lemon meringue pie.

Bat says she got the original from a women's magazine, back about the time I was starting kindergarten, so that puts it at the mid-1960s. Since then, she's made a few alterations, to keep everybody happy with this springtime treat.




Pop's Birthday Lemon Meringue Pie

Pastry crust

Ingredients:

1 large egg yolk
2 Tablespoons ice water
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
pinch salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoons sugar

Directions:

Beat yolk lightly and add ice water, lemon juice, and salt. Cut or work butter into flour, then add, along with sugar, to the egg mixture. Work ingredients together until they form a soft ball. Wrap in plastic and allow to chill in refrigerator at least 1/2 hour.

Remove from fridge, pat into 9" pie pan, flan ring, or springform pan. Place sheet of foil inside shell and fill with weights (beans or rice will do if you don't have ceramic pellets for the purpose). Bake in moderate oven (350º F) for 25 minutes.


Filling

Ingredients: 

6 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups sugar
grated rind of one lemon (about 1 Tablespoon)
1/2 cup lemon juice

3 Tablespoons butter
4 Tablespoons corn starch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups boiling water

Directions: 

Beat egg yolks well, add remaining ingredients except boiling water, and beat again thoroughly. Combine with boiling water and pour into top of double boiler. Cook over hot water until the mixture thickens , then allow to cook 5 to 10 minutes longer over simmering water.

Pour into baked shell.

 

 Top with meringue.


Meringue

Ingredients:

6 egg whites
pinch salt
12 Tablespoons sugar

Directions:

Beat egg whites until they form soft peaks. Add cream of tartar and salt, continue to beat until whites are stiff but not dry. Add sugar, a little at a time, beating in thoroughly. Spread meringue over surface of the pie completely, including the edge of the crust. (If you want to keep the meringue from weeping, and would like a slightly drier meringue, you may wish to add 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, or 1 teaspoon vinegar and 2 teaspoons corn starch).



 Bake in moderate oven (350º F) 15 to 18 minutes, until the peaks are delicate light (golden) brown.

Serve room temperature or chilled.

 If there are leftovers (it is to laugh!), keep refrigerated.

Update: finally realized I had not listed tha amount of lemon juice required. It would have made an amazingly bland filling, without the stuff...

Cheesy baked potato soup

Today, I had enough baked taters that, had I wanted to, I'd have been able to make that mountain of mashed that Richard Dreyfus sculpted in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Sometimes, when you have too many baked potatoes, there will come a point when you no longer want twice-baked or cottage fried spuds, but want something a little more appropriate for the damp and chilly evenings of early spring. My pop is a big fan of soups, and I do follow in his footsteps, there.

The fun thing about soups, in my mind, is that you don't really need a recipe to make it right. All you need, besides a mess of leftovers (or fresh stuff, if you must), is a little courage and some tastebuds. And a stock pot.

I had all of the above, and lots more.

Besides the potatoes from the land at the top of the bean stalk,

 

I had carrots, 

celery,

onions,

ham,

sweet pepper, 

extra-sharp cheeses,

other dairy products,

and water. Plenty of water.

And thus was a pot of soup begun.

Cheesy Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients:
1 1/2 quarts water
2 large carrots, sliced(about 1 cup)
1 small onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
2 stalks celery, leaves included, chopped (about 1 cup)
1 clove garlic, crushed or finely minced
Salt, pepper to taste

3-4 cups baked potato
1 large sweet bell pepper
2 cups chopped ham (you may also opt for lean bacon)
1/3 cup corn starch
!/2 cup water
1 (4 oz) small brick light cream cheese (neufchatel)
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup whipping or heavy cream
4 cups extra-sharp semi-moist cheeses (my choice is a mix of 3 parts extra-sharp cheddar and 1 part smoked gouda)

Directions:

In a 4-quart or larger pot, bring water to a boil.  Clean and chop onions, celery, carrots, garlic, add to pot. Add salt & pepper.



 Return to boil, reduce and simmer at least 3 hours, or as much as 24 hours.Allow to cook down about 20%. If it reduces too much, just add some water back in. The water should look like tea - the longer it simmers, the darker it may have gotten.  Scoop out the bits of vegetable and discard* (don't worry if the pepper remains in the water. It won't ruin anything). 

About an hour before serving, return water to boil. Add chopped ham, allow return to simmer over medium heat.

In a small dish or cup, mix corn starch and 1/2 cup water. Add to pot. Stir until slightly thickened. Reduce heat to low.

Peel the looser, papery skin off the potatoes, but don't worry about anything that shows determination to stick with its original tuber. We admire that in vegetable matter. Let some stay on.




Chop those spuds into cubes, about 1/2 inch or so, but keep them smaller than bite size.



Clean, seed, and chop the sweet pepper.



Add cream cheese to pot (I recommend putting it on a plate and popping it into a microwave oven until it's mostly melted – about 40 seconds at full, before adding, but, if you don't want to do so, or your nuke is misbehaving, just add it to the liquid in small chunks, and whisk in thoroughly. Don't be disheartened if tiny dots of it rise to the surface. They will eventually work themselves into the soup).



Add in sour cream. It, too, may start out with those little white dots on the surface. It, too, will mix in eventually.

Once it looks like it's mostly dissolved into the liquid, add the rest of the ingredients (cream, cheeses, potatoes, peppers).

Stir well, simmer on low heat until about 10 minutes before serving. Allow to stand and cool slightly. Serve hot with biscuits or a hearty bread and butter.

Serves many.



*You are not required to throw the vegetables away – I've used them in frittatas and other dishes, even to give a lift to mashed taters (mixed with sweet taters, too!).

Note: If you have a little frozen, fresh, or leftover steamed corn, you may enjoy stir-frying it in browned butter until caramelized, and serving as a garnish with some fresh chopped celery leaves.

My Harry Nilsson Rum Cake

I have discovered a good use for spirits, besides capping off my evening with a sip of something pleasantly smoky.

I bought some rum for a specific recipe last fall, and, for the life of me, I can't recall what the heck that recipe was. And, seeing as how I'm a Scotch kind of girl, having a full bottle of rum did not turn me into a pirate. It sat on the shelf, mocking me.

Worse, I had a nearly full container of Coco Real sitting on the shelf, also mocking me because I had allowed it to sit until its sell-by date was upon us both.

And then, there was the lime. And the grated coconut.



And the cake mix.

And my best friend packing up to move two states away.  I had a belly ache.

So, I followed Harry's doctor's advice, and put the lime in the coconut.

And then, there was rum.

You can see where this went:


My Harry Nilsson Rum Cake

Ingredients:

Rum concoction:

2 Tablespoons very finely grated lime zest
2/3 cup lime juice (if you can get key lime, it's the best)
1 cup coconut creme, thoroughly mixed
2/3 cup light rum


cake:
One plain cake mix, your choice of yellow or white (I used white)
eggs (see what your mix requires)
oil (see what your mix requires)
water (see mix instructions and note, below)*
1 cup rum concoction, plus more for brushing on during and after baking

frosting:
2 8-oz bricks cream cheese, softened to room temp
1/3 cup rum concoction
2 cups (or more) confectioner's sugar
1 cup sweetened, flaked coconut

Directions:

Grease pans thoroughly (I recommend two 9" pans, for maximum effect, but use what you have), line bottoms with parchment, if you have it, and grease top of parchment.  If you don't have parchment, use a little bit of the cake mix to "dust" the pans.

In a drink shaker or a quart jar, combine lime juice, lime zest, coconut creme, and rum. Shake well. (If you want to do so, you can toss it in a blender, but that's more cleanup than I like to do.)

Preheat oven to the temperature recommended on your cake mix box (usually 350º F).  In a medium mixing bowl, combine 1cup of the above rum concoction, cake mix, eggs, oil, and water. Mix, pour into pans, and bake according to package instructions.

About 10 minutes before cake is done, brush top of cake with rum concoction, finish baking.

As soon as you take the cake out of the oven, brush top again with rum concoction.

Allow to cool, remove from pans, brush again with rum concoction, all sides.

When cake is completely cool, in a small mixer bowl, combine cream cheese, 1/3 cup rum concoction**, and 1 cup confectioner's (powdered) sugar, using mixer at medium speed. Continue to add sugar until thickened enough to hold its shape in soft peaks.  Stir in flaked coconut.  Slather on cake like there's no tomorrow. If you so desire, add more flaked coconut on top.


I fixed this cake on another occasion, replacing, with the rum mix, all the water the white cake mix called for, and then baking it in a jelly roll pan. It comes out a little denser than the usual cake – sort of halfway between standard fluffy white cake and pound cake.  Once cooled, it was then easy to cut in half, layer with frosting (this also has some green frosting color added), & stack before finishing the frosting as you see here. 

Chill (both you and the cake) about an hour. Serve cool, perhaps even topping with some dried pineapple decorating the top (but then, it's heading toward becoming a Pina Colada cake, and that's a whole nother song).



*Your mix may call for more or less than 1 cup water. The rum concoction should replace no more than 1 cup of the liquid required, so add water according to the needs of the mix.

**You are likely to have some rum concoction left over. Do not let it go to waste. Pour it over ice and sip it through a straw, while watching Beach Blanket Bingo, or some other sandy, bikini-laden and teen-star-studded delight.

How To Fritter Away Your Morning

I used to have a snazzy little recipe keeper, one I had received from a loved one, in which were all my favorite odds-and-ends recipes.  Well, that little book somehow developed legs and wandered off (or, it found its way to the landfill when the cleaners hauled away the contents of my hoarder-hovel).

Anyway, I lost a few precious recipes, and have been digging for them ever since. The nice thing about the internet is, a LOT of people share similar tastes, so many of my recipes could be recovered, more or less, by adapting already published ones on the various cooking websites & blogs.

In the case of this one recipe, however, I think I'm the only remaining cook to have had an interest in reviving a treat I used to make fairly regularly for my ain true luve, that being coconut rice fritters.

I'd come across the idea originally in a tattered collection of brand-name recipes published by… I have no idea who the publisher was.  All I recall was, I found it in a remainders bin at Kroch's  & Brentano's, in Chicago, when I was still in my teens.  It was larger than a standard notebook, cheaply printed, cheaply paper-bound, and contained "1001 Brand Name Recipes", all of which had originally been made available by food companies (e.g. the Tuna Rice Napoli – a casserole – was originally from Chicken of the Sea, and a chicken satay recipe within came from a peanut butter offer).

I have no idea whether this came from a rice processor, a coconut company, or some other, but I'd make a batch, and they'd disappear before I was finished washing up the bowls.


At any rate, I've managed to dig around and combine a number of different recipes, in order to get an approximate reproduction of that favorite dish.

On their own, the fritters are not very sweet, by the way.  If  you want sweetness, it comes with the amount of stuff you choose to sprinkle over them.

But, here you are:




Buttery Coconut Rice Fritters

Ingredients:

3-4 cups oil for frying

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar

1 large egg
2/3 cups buttermilk*
1 Tablespoon butter, melted

2/3 cup cooked rice
1/2 cup sweetened, shredded coconut

powdered sugar for sprinkling

Directions:

In a deep fryer or a heavy pot, heat oil to 365º F.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder salt, sugar.

In small mixing bowl (or one of those spiffy blending cups like tupperware makes), combine buttermilk, egg, and melted butter. Mix well. Add rice and coconut, making sure it is completely mixed and rice grains have fully separated to be coated individually.

Add wet and dry ingredients together. Stir until completely mixed, but do not over-mix. Drop by heaping tablespoonfuls into the hot oil.  Fry until golden, turning once.

Drain on paper towels.

Dust lightly with powdered sugar.  Serve warm.


*I've been known to add powdered buttermilk to lowfat milk for a slightly richer effect, when making fritters.  If you don't much care for the tang of buttermilk, though, you can get away with using regular milk. But I will think less of you, you big sissy.  ;)

Christmas made easy

The Bat, the Geezer and I hosted Christmas dinner for what I like to call our "Volunteer Family", a group who, with no genetic ties to us more recent than, probably, the time of the birthday celebrant, still chooses to remain close to us and call us family.  Because these are people whose company we greatly enjoy, we don't like to waste a lot of time hiding out in the kitchen while they are here, so we plan our menus accordingly.

Dinner, yesterday, was a great big beef sirloin roast, a loaf of Challah, steamed sweet corn, five-cup salad (brought by the matriarch of the Volunteers, who also brought dessert: pumpkin pie and a giant Sam's Club apple pie, for which we provided the whipped cream), and twice-baked potatoes.

The potatoes raised eyebrows and smiles. Our logic in serving them was simple: if you make them ahead of time, all you have to do is bake them.  You don't need to make any gravy, no fussing over last-minute details.  Simply bake, assemble, and re-bake right before you want to serve them.

The funny thing is, every time the Bat & I make these things, we get remarks like, "Mine never taste as good.  They always come out kind of boring."  And we think we may have discovered the biggest problem for most people.  It's always about ingredients.

If you make anything in which cheese is a major ingredient (breads, chicken pot pie, or twice baked potatoes), ALWAYS use sharp or extra sharp cheeses. Delicate flavors disappear when you bake them into things, unless you pile on extra, at which time the original recipe's texture suffers.

We prefer Tillamook's extra-sharp cheddar, and you can stay with that, or you can use the flavor you most like, whether it be blue, Swiss, or some exotic variety.  It's fine to experiment, as long as it's a cheese of strong character.

But here's our base recipe, with which we play (and, if you don't need quite so much potato for your meal, these babies can be individually wrapped and frozen):

Twice-Baked Potatoes

Ingredients:

Six large russet potatoes
butter to coat

8 Tablespoons butter (one stick), divided
2 cups plain, unsweetened Greek-style yogurt
2 cups freshly-grated extra-sharp cheddar cheese, divided
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1/4 cup ranch-style dressing

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400º F. Scrub and dry potatoes, cut off any blemishes, plus trim off one end.  Pierce each potato repeatedly with fork or narrow knife. Coat with butter.  Place directly on rack in the oven, bake approximately one hour, or until tender, turning once.

Remove from oven.

While they are still hot, cut potatoes in half and scoop as much of the "meat" of the potato into a large mixing bowl, being sure to leave a little to help the skin retain a bowl shape.  Set the potato-skin boats on a cookie sheet or jelly-roll pan.  Add half stick (4 Tablespoons) butter, all the yogurt, 1 cup cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup parmesan, and ranch dressing. Mix completely, until cheese is all melted in.

By tablespoons, return filling to potato skin shells, in moderately-heaping proportions (if you are feeling fancy, you can use a press for fancy textured tops, but I like the rustic look).  Allow to cool in refrigerator a few hours, or overnight.

Before re-baking:

Preheat oven to at least 325º F (we just bake them alongside whatever meat we're roasting).

Melt 1/2 stick butter in small pan or microwave-safe dish. By teaspoon, drizzle over the top of each potato boat, especially making sure any of the "meat" which had been remaining to shape the boat gets a touch of it.  Don't worry if some dribbles over the edge of the boat, because it will help keep the skin crispy.  Top with remaining mix of cheeses (if you like, you may add other cheese varieties, here). Place in oven at least 20 minutes, until the potatoes are hot and cheese topping begins to bubble.

Serve hot.  (Makes 12)

Cranberry Upside-Down Molasses Cake

Pop reminded us a month or so ago that he likes gingerbread, when he brought home a [gasp!] mix he fixed for himself. With that in mind, I decided for Christmas, I'd have to make a cake for him from scratch.

He added dried cranberries to his mix, and asked about icing recipes, so we put together a cream cheese frosting he seemed to enjoy. 

With Pop in mind, the Bat looked through her cookbooks, I scoured my cookbooks and recipe sites online, looking for one that would make Pop happy. Nothing really seemed quite right, so we improvised.

What we finally came up with was this, gooey enough it needed no icing:

Cranberry Upside-Down Molasses Cake

Ingredients:

For the Fruit Caramel:

1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter 

1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

Finely grated zest of 1 large orange

Juice of 1 orange*, approximately 1/3 cup

2 cups fresh cranberries

1/2 cup dried cranberries

For the cake:

1 1/ cups water, brought to a boil 

1 cup strong molasses

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 1/2 cups All-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1 Tablespoon powdered ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground mustard

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick (8 Tablespoons) butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar, tightly packed

1 large egg

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Grease thoroughly a 9x13x2-inch baking pan.

Cranberry caramel:

In a medium saucepan or frying pan, melt butter and sugars, stirring frequently until sugar dissolves. Allow to boil about 2 minutes, remove from heat, add orange juice & zest.  Pour into baking pan, spread cranberries over the top. Set aside.

Cake:

In small saucepan, bring water to a boil. Remove from heat, add molasses and whisk in baking soda.  Set aside.

In medium bowl, sift together dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and seasonings).

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter, add & cream brown sugar, add & cream egg. When they are light and fluffy, add 1/3 of the dry ingredients, mix thoroughly, then add 1/3 of molasses mixture, mixing completely before adding the next 1/3 of the dry ingredients, and repeating process until all is mixed.  

Pour batter over cranberry mixture, covering completely. Put on medium rack in oven bake at 350º F for 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.  

Allow to cool slightly, with a thin spatula or knife make sure the sides are loosened from pan, set cookie sheet over the top of it and flip it.  Top with vanilla ice cream, if you desire. Serve warm.

*We do NOT recommend navel oranges for this recipe. While they may be easier to peel, and conveniently seedless, they are less juicy and flavorful.  If you can, use a juicing orange such as a Valencia or Texas sweet.

Variation on a theme: Lasagna

This evening, I discovered that a mistake can turn out for the better. I was assembling the layers of my lasagna using my favorite Aldi vodka pasta sauce and the last of the Thanksgiving turkey, and forgot to grate the mozzarella* to add in with the ricotta cheese [gasp!].  I had a little set aside from my last pizza project, but I really didn't want to spend all that extra energy either grating by hand or cleaning the cylinder to the Kitchen Aid, so I decided to bump up the ricotta slightly, add an extra egg to my usual formula, and, surprisingly, the company liked it better than my usual.

Sure, it's fun to have a gooey slice of something, but this time, it was almost cheesecakey, and slightly richer and more savory than I anticipated.  

Pop and our male guest each had seconds (if Pop goes for seconds, I know I've done okay, because he's very conservative in his eating habits… unlike his eldest daughter). I made enough so I can pop a few servings into the freezer, though, so I'll have something to enjoy when the old folks are gone on their next trip out of town.

Meanwhile, here's what I done did today:

Something like lasagna, post-Thanksgiving edition

Ingredients:

2 jars Aldi vodka marinara sauce (or your favorite other variety, if you must. I'd recommend something with mushrooms or spinach, if need be)

2 to 3 cups roasted turkey, chopped into roughly 1/2-inch chunks

1 medium sweet onion, finely chopped

1 package no-boil lasagna noodles

1 1/2 containers (15 ounces each) ricotta cheese

3 eggs

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon basil (or more, if fresh)

1/2 teaspoon minced roasted garlic

2 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese, grated

1/2 cup finely grated parmesan cheese

Directions:

A day before, in a medium saucepan, saute chopped onion until caramelized. Add in marinara sauce and turkey. Simmer over very low heat overnight for fullest flavor and tenderest turkey shreds. (This step may be shortened to just the morning, if your turkey is already in tender shreds resembling pulled meat barbecue).

Preheat oven to 375º F.  Prepare 9x14" lasagna pan with non-stick spray (or, if you don't have any on hand, just grease the heck out of it).

In a medium bowl, thoroughly mix ricotta, eggs, oregano, basil, garlic. Divide into thirds.

Ladle enough marinara sauce into bottom of lasagna pan to just coat it.  Set in a layer of lasagna noodles according to package instructions.  Coat with first third of ricotta mixture. Cover with layer of sauce. Go for another layer of noodles, ricotta, then sauce. Repeat once more. Cover that with remaining sauce, then sprinkle parmesan cheese and top with Mozzarella (you may choose to hold back a half-cup or so, just for finishing touches).

Cover entire dish with a tent of aluminum foil. 

Bake 50-60 minutes.  Remove foil (if foil has stuck to cheese, don't worry, just toss the reserved mozzarella on it & go with the flow), continue to bake another 10 minutes, or until cheese edges begin to turn golden-brown.  Remove from oven.

Allow to stand 5-10 minutes before serving.

*I try to avoid using pre-packaged grated cheeses, these days, because I'm not particularly fond of the finish left by the starch or whatever coating they use to keep the shreds from sticking together.  If you use the prepared stuff, by no means should you feel obliged to go crazy & buy more than a single 2-cup pouch.  Unless you really want to.

Moo's Potato & Eggplant Curry Thingy

Some years back, my seester (with whom the rest of us – being obnoxious siblings – saddled an unflattering and singularly inapt nick-name) was on a tight budget & was heading toward becoming a vegetarian as a result.  We swapped a few ideas for how to salvage ramen noodles, of course, and did a lot of other odds and ends in her kitchen, including giving me the opportunity to discover a few more of my allergies while broadening our culinary horizons.

She's become more fiscally sound, since then, and also become more protein-focused, but I've kept the one recipe from those hard times that actually made me feel that being broke and meatless wasn't quite a fate worse than death.

The first time my seester fixed this for us, it was in her apartment in Philadelphia, on one of those trips to visit I could barely afford to take, and she could barely afford to host me, but… well… she's my seester.  Just sitting around and talking with her is an awesome way to spend a week.  Food is a bonus.

So, there we were, in her tiny kitchen, with her wok and her cutting board on her tiny drop-leaf table from Ikea, going all teamwork-y on this sumptuous feast of curry on rice.  I can still see the steam on her glasses as she checked the taters' tenderness…

Now, it's your turn to steam up your own glasses, or smoke your tastebuds, or whatever.

Moo's Potato & Eggplant Curry Thingy

Ingredients:

5 large potatoes (about 2 1/2 lbs), peeled & cubed about 1/2" to 1"
2 medium eggplants (about 2 lbs total)
plenty of table salt
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp each: ground ginger, turmeric, cumin seeds,
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp each: cayenne pepper, cinnamon, and coriander
2 cloves fresh garlic, pressed or crushed
2 1/2 c. water
2/3 c. cooked or fresh peas (if frozen, thaw under hot water until just above room temp)
2 medium sweet bell peppers, cut into 1/2 inch squares
1 c. plain yogurt (I use Greek style)
4-6 cups cooked rice

Directions:

Peel eggplant, slice into 1/2 inch thicknesses.  Salt both sides of each slice, let stand on rack or paper towels about 1/2 hour.  Using fresh paper towels, press out liquids. Cut into cubes.

Peel & cut potatoes.

Melt butter in wok or large frying pan at medium-high heat. Add black mustard seed.  When they have mostly popped, add other spices and garlic. Brown slightly, then add potatoes, mixing thoroughly to cover the potatoes with spice mixture.  Let potatoes brown, then stir in eggplant.

Add water, allow to simmer uncovered 20-25 minutes stirring occasionally, until potatoes are tender.

While that is cooking, clean & cut peppers.

Remove wok from heat.

Add peppers and peas, allow to warm up. Add yogurt to taste (you may instead decide to have individuals add this as it is served).  Serve on rice.

Feeds 4-6.

Update, 13 January, 2013: in a fit of cabin fever, I decided to make this no matter what ingredients I had in the house. I lacked cumin seeds and cayenne pepper, so I adjusted to approximately 3/4 tsp, ground cumin, added saffron instead of turmeric, and minced five small serrano peppers (about 2 Tbs) instead of using the cayenne. The bell peppers I had were sweet red peppers, so, again, I made do. It came out very nicely, if I do say so, myself. The red peppers perked up the look tremendously, and the whole dish seemed just a little fresher than the last time I'd fixed it.

Extra-Special Chocolate Chip Cookies

The Bat says this recipe is a variation on one she found on a bag of chocolate chips, but it wasn't the Toll House recipe.  I don't rightly know… sometimes she likes pulling my poor, twisted and abused leg.  But any way you look at it, most recipes you find on bags of chocolate chips don't make a whopping 5 dozen heaping-tablespoons-of-dough cookies.  They seem to think the average American family will never have teen-aged boys, so they provide you with enough dough to make a couple dozen "modest" cookies.  You know, the kind that pass as a single serving when you ask official dietitians. When you ask mothers, though, a serving is whatever size will fill a young mouth so no sass can come out of it for the moment.

So, my mother made these cookies.  Or, rather, she made the dough and some cookies. We lived dangerously, back then, and nobody died from raw dough in the digestive tract. If, on the other hand, you worry about that sort of thing, feel free to make a substitution of pasteurized liquid egg white where the recipe calls for eggs.  Or, live life for the moment.

Either way, bake yourself a batch of the best chocolate chip cookies I ever had.  In theory, the recipe makes 5 dozen MONSTER cookies.  In our reckless house, I've never seen the dough left alone long enough to get the whole thing into the oven, but maybe you'll have some luck with that.

Extra-Special Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups shortening* (do NOT use cooking oil)
2 cups brown sugar
2  cups granulated sugar
6 large or jumbo eggs
2 Tablespoons vanilla
2 teaspoons salt

7 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda

5 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips, chocolate chunks, or Heath Bits O'Brickle
3 cups coarsely chopped pecans (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375º F.

With mixer, cream shortening and sugar until very fluffy (about 5 minutes).  Add eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly. Add vanilla and salt.

In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and soda. Add to creamed mixture and stir until completely mixed.

Add in chips and nuts.

Drop by heaping TABLESPOONS onto ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 12-15 minutes, or until beginning to turn golden-brown on top.

[This dough may be formed into balls or tubes and frozen for up to five months.]


*Mom uses butter, & leaves them slightly undercooked by setting the oven at 350º F, to make soft, gooey, extra-tasty cookies.